Climatology

of Caribbean Hurricanes

Hits & Misses

Below an overview of the number of named tropical systems (hurricanes and tropical storms) passing by within 60nm (or 69 miles) of each of all the major Caribbean islands and Bermuda. The locations below are sorted by number of severe hurricanes (category 3-5) over the period 1851-2010. The year 1944 is generally regarded as the start of 'reliable' hurricane observations; therefore the number of storms during the period 1944-2010 is given between brackets.

The price for 'Hurricane Capital of the Caribbean' goes to the island of Abaco in the Bahamas, with 18 severe hurricanes since 1851 (which is on average one hurricane per 8-9 years), although in the last 60 years there were only 4 (one hurricane every 15 years). Since 1944 Nevis, Key West and Cuba (Habana) have seen the most severe hurricanes (7 or about one every 8-9 years). Grand Bahama tied with Abaco for the most hurricanes (40, 1 every ~4 years). At the bottom of the list: Bonaire and Curacao which have in the last 150+ years only seen 12 named storms pass by (none of these were severe hurricanes). Also, the Eastern Caribbean doesn't see as many hurricanes as the Western Caribbean, which is a little deceiving since the area of the Western Caribbean region is bigger (Cayman, part of the Western part, is only ranked 31, while Nevis, in the Eastern region is number 6). The Bahamas region however, with its smallest area, is definitely more active then the E. and W. Caribbean.

Legend:pos: position (sorted by number of severe hurricanes), code: ICAO weather station identifier (see footnote*); lat-N: latitude in degrees North; lon-W: longitude in degrees West; h3-h5: severe hurricanes (category 3, 4 or 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale; h1-h5: all hurricanes; all: total of all named tropical systems (tropical storms and hurricanes); h5, h4, ...: category 5, 4, etc. hurricane; ts: tropical storm. The top five in several of the categories are given in red.

* Not all islands listed have an official International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Identifier, the four letter meteorological station location code. For those missing I made one up. For example St.John, USVI does not have a ICAO code, so I named it KSSJ. For more information see: http://weather.noaa.gov/tg/site.shtml.